Other people need to stop telling you that you’re too sensitive – but they won’t. So, what’s left to do? You need to stop telling yourself that you’re too sensitive.

Because those are the things that really hurt: the things that others say, that match what we feel deep down inside.

If you truly didn’t believe it down in your bones, it wouldn’t get to you. Because if I told you your feet are not purple enough, you wouldn’t give three hoots, right? You’d look at me, bemused “what on earth is she going on about?”

But when someone says you’re too sensitive, or too emotional or too much or too little of something, it does get to you. When it does get to you, somewhere deep inside, far far away from your conscious mind, you believe it.

So, what to do?

We can take the criticism as feedback, not that there is something terribly wrong with us, but that we’re insecure, unsettled, confused and needing support around something.

When someone points a finger and it hurts, then that’s your body saying: there is a thorny lie stuck in your system, and it’s time for you to get it out!

Trying to make the other person stop saying it doesn’t do much good. It’s like telling little bored boys to stop throwing bread at ducks. It rarely works. And it’s also beside the point.

If I insist on wearing a dress made of paper, I can’t very well expect the rain to stop every time I want to go outside.

Just as we need to dress in a resilient way, we also need to manage our insides in a resilient way.

We are responsible for what is happening inside of us, whether we like it or not.

The solution is not to fake it until you make it (my dress is made of paper, but I’ll tell everyone it has a plastic coating!), it’s to get honest about what is really going on, and learn ways to heal. Get that thorn out.

For us Highly Sensitive People, there are a few key aspects to getting all the thorns out:

Key Aspect no.1 to getting the thorn out: We need to be mindful of our tendency to focus (only) on the good in others, and not work ourselves to the bone to make our relationships work.

Many thorns were born in bad relationships (whether romantic, family or friendships). Once the thorn is in, it’s often easier to leave it there to fester, than to do the work to pull it out. Because pulling it out also means facing that nobody should have put it there in the first place – not even your mom / dad / husband / childhood friend.

Pulling the thorn out requires seeing that that rose bush that looks so pretty has a prickly side. Whereas, if you leave the thorn in, you can just blame yourself for hurting, and only stare at the beautiful blooms, remaining oblivious to the prickly stems.

Yet, leaving the thorn in also means that you’re endlessly cleaning the same festering wound, you have chronic pain at the location of the thorn. The longer it sits there, the more strongly you come to believe that the pain is “just me”.

In that way, feelings of powerlessness, hopelessness, depression, confusion, fear, panic, anger, and rage all become a story about “who you are” instead of what they were intended to be: a wake-up call that something needs to change.

These emotions are designed to move you into action: to move you away from what is causing the hurt, and seek out what is peaceful, or fun for you.

But what happens when you believe that all that pain is “just you” is this: you start moving away from what you think is causing the pain. Since you think you are the cause of the pain, you start moving away further and further from yourself.

You find ways to shut down your feelings, ignore your own yearnings and needs, you stop expressing yourself fully, and you look for rules “out there” about who you should be to make the pain go away.

All because of a core confusion: the pain is not because of who you are. The pain is a sign that something about your situation, your thoughts, your choices, your habits, your assumptions, is hurting you. None of that is who you are. Thoughts are learned, choices are made, habits are created, and can be re-created.

Key Aspect no.2 to getting the thorn out: As a Highly Sensitive Person you are more sensitive to stress.

You react more strongly. Your body doesn’t have as much incubation rubber around it as most other people do. This is why toughening up is such a bad idea for us. It’s like comparing a butterfly to a turtle.

You can make the butterfly sit still in a hailstorm to toughen up, but it will just damage it, not make it stronger.

What makes a butterfly strong is not trying to resist brute force, but smart strategy.

If it folds its wings and crawls into a crack in the wall during a hail storm, then it will be just fine. No turtle shell needed.

Yet what a lot of us learn to do -to try and be a turtle- is we disconnect from our bodies. When you disconnect, you don’t feel the pain as much. You seem fine, even if your wings are damaged. You feel it less, so you tell yourself you’re fine. But what’s really happening is that you’re lacking a healthy strategy. A strategy that protects you and prevents damage.

There is nothing wrong with wearing a hat when other people don’t claim to need one. I do it all the time. I dress more warmly, I often bring a warm vest just in case. Why would using a strategy that works make you weak? If it stops me from getting a cold, then it makes me strong.

We are people, not bison. You can’t put us outside in a snowstorm in just our pyjamas and expect us to thrive. As people, we are all about smart strategy. We survived and evolved through our smarts and inventions, not our brute strength and sharp teeth. So let’s stop pretending that the “essence” of being a cool human being is being super tough. In the bigger scheme of things, we’re pretty wimpy animals anyway.

It keeps you connected to your body: you know what is happening there, what you feel and what you need.

It prevents damage, you are aware of your limits in all kinds of situations. You don’t push yourself to do things that don’t work for you.

You meet your life goals through smart strategy not brute force. (Brute force includes: working endlessly, sacrificing sleep, not eating well, never exercising because you have no time, never slowing down to check in with yourself, getting caught up in how things “should” be instead of how they are, pushing down or ignoring your feelings, trying to control everything).

Because when you’re stressed all the time, it wreaks havoc on your body and keeps you from accessing inner peace and clarity. The problem just gets worse and worse and even though you numb out and don’t feel it, you are hurting.

When you’re hurting like that deep down inside, it really hurts when someone tells you you’re too sensitive. Because deep down you know that something about how you’re dealing with things isn’t really working for you.

You can’t keep shaking that inner snow globe. You need to give the flakes time to settle down.

It’s not your fault, nobody taught you better, but it is up to you to decide to do something about it.

When you do, when you develop that sensitive-friendly strategy for doing everything, then you will know that you are strong in your own way. It won’t just be empty words. And other people will see that and be much less likely to try to make you trip over their words.

As to developing that strategy, you don’t have to do it alone, I can help. Because the toughing it out on your own – that too – is often part of the old “trying to be a turtle” problem – because someone, somewhere, believed turtles were better.

There are a lot of ways of dealing with your feelings without actually dealing with them.

Let me count the ways!

1 – Suppressing them

You seal them in a tiny black box and never look at them again.

The problem? They’re still there. It’s like taking all your bills and dumping them in a box in the bottom of your closet. That never ends well.

Like Nick says: “It’s my box! It’s where I keep all my junk that I don’t feel like dealing with”

You might be surprised though how many people – including professionals – think shoving the box in your closet is a great idea. Because then you can close the door on all that and focus on thinking positive thoughts.

Or as an ex-therapist of one of my clients said: hatred is an emotion that simply is not allowed!

So when you feel it, I guess you just need to hide it in a box and pretend it’s not there.

Again, far too many people really believe that works: “I refuse to feel it, so it’s not there!”

Sigh.

Your parents might have believed that, but come on, this is the 21st century.

How this shows up in conversations:

The past is in the past

You just need to move on

Just let it go

To clarify, this doesn’t mean you need to break open all your traumas and throw yourself into those pits of whirling emotions… I mean, yes it needs healing, but not all at once.

If Nick had 30 shoeboxes, you wouldn’t dump them all on the floor and not sleep for weeks to sort it out. You’d do things one box at a time – at most.

It also doesn’t mean you keep driving past your ex’s house to see what they’re up to now… (you can choose healthier behaviours, and still acknowledge that on the inside, you have things to work through before you can really move on)

2 – Rationalise them away

There is a place for understanding how particular thoughts can make you feel bad unnecessarily. It’s useful to analyse your thinking patterns and check: does this help?

Standing in front of a mirror and yelling at yourself that you’re ugly really doesn’t do anyone any good. Nor does repeating to yourself that the world is just a bad place not worth living in.

They have an intuitive purpose of their own. Living up in your head is not a healthy way to be, regardless of what any particular brand of therapy may state. Yes, there are many people who live up in their heads exclusively. They can be very convinced that that is the right way.

Or as a very tense and nervous man in a meditation class once said: “I am very peaceful”. It just meant he kept repeating that thought to himself and didn’t even notice all the tension in his body.

Emotions are like tonsils, o.k.? Once upon a time doctors believed they were uselessjust because they couldn’t discern their purpose (yet). The take-away? Just because you don’t understand the purpose of your emotions yet doesn’t make them useless. Refrain from trying to cut them out just yet.

What if you have a therapist who can’t help you understand the value of all your different emotions? Run before they teach you to cut them out and then take you for ice cream.

If you feel bad, it’s because you’re not looking at things the right way.

You have to expell all negativity and only think positive thoughts to attract good things to you.

3 – Throw them at people

It gets worse. Especially people who have a combination of sensitivity to energy + passive agressiveness (avoiding conflict, yet punishing others at the same time) + blame (as in: “I’m fine, everyone else has a problem”) have a tendency to push the feelings they don’t like out and away.

They’ll say “that’s not mine to deal with” to anything they don’t like, including their emotions. Oh, and while those feelings are out there just lying around and being “not mine”, they make for good ammunition too.

Instead of feeling their feelings, they throw them at people. Like a food fight. Yes literally. But it’s all very subtle. They often struggle with relationships for this reason. People don’t like them much, but nobody can put their finger on why. Imagine it like if the red jam was transparent:

The take-away? People don’t like it when you throw things at them. But also: a habit of not taking responsibility for feelings can run on autopilot. Many people who do this have no idea. They’re also flabbergasted as to why – after a while – other people avoid their food truck.

How this shows up in conversations:

I need to protect myself from everyone’s negativity.

I’m too spiritual to get angry or hate anyone or anything.

I only allow positive vibrations into my space.

I don’t like conflict, people should always just calmly talk about things.

I need to surround myself with white light to be safe from all the bad things out there.

4 – Remove them

Sadly, a lot of “healing” practices teach ways to cut emotions away like they’re a piece of mold. They treat it like “negativity” without any purpose, other than that it mucks up your vibe.

The first step is to put the patient on a massage table.

The next step is to slice off all the negativity from their aura. Keep slicing until the toxicity is completely removed.

Now place the patient in a fresh white light of auric protection and seal.

Make sure you remove all “yes, but” about this process from the client’s mind. Otherwise, their negative expectations and thoughts will attract new negativity more quickly.

How this shows up in conversations:

It’s all just negative energy.

How do I get rid of my bad emotions?

Just let it all go.

Breathe out all the black smoke and breathe in white light.

Just decide to release all toxicity from your body right now, and it is done.

5- Run from them

This strategy requires that you stay insanely busy at all times! The moment you calm down, you just know something bad will happen. You don’t know what, but it will be bad! That bad thing? It’s that your feelings will start to surface.

It’s not a bad thing actually, just a part of life, your life.

The benefit of running from your feelings is that as you’re doing that, you’re running from reality. That means you can pretend reality is whatever you want it to be! So, it’s actually a survival mechanism that kids from abusive families especially, develop to cope.

That’s true for all the ways of not dealing with feelings listed here. It’s just that the running strategy is something that has multiple coping patterns all wrapped into one. It’s like an extra strong dosage:

Keeping your stress levels high keeps you feeling strong (due to all the stress hormones) which is a nice way to cover up all the feelings of powerlessness.

Staying busy gets you a lot of kudos from society. You’re a good person! You make things happen! You are motivated! You can be counted on! Approval never hurts, and the benefits of achieving (you get lots done) are also very nice and practical to have! Plus, all of that goes a long way to make you feel important, which helps balance out that inner sense of worthlessness that is kept under wraps.

When you keep running enough, you don’t have to deal with your feelings much at all. Your body keeps them away from you because it figures you have bigger fish to fry right now.

The stress itself will convince you that either “you need to struggle to survive” (when you’re stuck in chronic fight patterns) or that “the future somewhere else will give you everything you need” (when you’re stuck in chronic flight). The struggle provides a sense of purpose. The future somewhere else provides a sense of hope. Two things you can really use when you’ve had to deal with abuse.

The “only” problem is, running from your feelings also keeps you stuck in that deeper reality that makes you want to run. It’s like never wanting to rest, because the sheets on your bed never get washed, and so your bed is uncomfortable and you’d rather stay up. But if you do the work to wash the sheets, your bed will feel a whole lot better, and you get to experience how nourishing it is to sleep.

The take-away? You can’t run forever. You can’t keep napping in your car. At some point you need to wash the bed sheets and have a real rest.

And anyways, if you keep running from them, your emotions will try to reach you in roundabout ways. It really is worth it to slow down and let them catch up, even if it feels scary. That U.F.O.: Unidentified Freakish Overtakenbyemotion is just an old coyote in a tin can. No worries.

How this shows up in conversations:

I don’t have time to slow down.

I have more important things to do than meditate.

I know I need to do some inner work but I’ll do it when my life settles down.

There is just too much going on for me to be able to focus on or take time for myself.

If I slow down and feel then I don’t get everything done and I worry I may just collapse and sleep for 3 weeks.

Awareness is a good thing. But what exactly does it mean to “be aware”?

Being aware can be as basic as “I know this thing is happening, I am aware!”. It can even go as far as “I know when this thing is happening! I am standing right there and being very very aware of it!”

The problem with awareness is, it doesn’t necessarily change anything.

Example: Potato Chips

You can be aware of eating too many potato chips.

“Lookie here, I am aware! As I am putting these potato chips in my mouth, I am aware that I am eating them! I even know the solution, I need to stop eating them! I know, I should eat cucumbers instead! I am aware of the problem and I know what I need to do!”

Does this kind of awareness solve anything? Not really. Sure, it’s better than eating potato chips in your sleep and having no idea what happened when your bed is full of crumbs the next morning.

In terms of getting a problem solved, just knowing that you are eating potato chips is a small step. There is still a long way to go before the eating of the potato chips has actually stopped!

Awareness is the starting point, not the end point to solving a problem.

Awareness is not a magic switch. An awareness of the problem doesn’t magically solve it. In fact, many times awareness can become an excuse. “Well yes, I am aware of the problem! You don’t need to tell me anything I don’t already know!”

Knowing or Doing?

The problem with all this talk of awareness is that there is too much focus on “knowing” things, and assuming that knowing something will magically solve it.

As you start thinking about a problem, it can start to feel like if you just find the right piece of crucial information, everything will fall into place. You just have to put the right code into your brain, and everything else will sort itself out magically! (Where can I download this code? I need to download it immediately!)

I know some very rational people will snort at that, magic puh! Yet, it’s precisely those very rational people who often have this problem: thinking they can think their way out of everything.

Before you say ‘that’s not me, ever!’ consider if you’ve ever thought things like this:

I wish I could just find the answer

I just want to find the right book to read that will explain everything so I can change it

I just don’t understand

I want to have the insights I need

I’m sure I can figure this out

I want to get all the information on this

I have some questions that need to be answered before I can take action

I am the kind of person who needs to talk things through before I can commit to trying something

I already knew that

I am just looking for more information on this that will help me solve this problem!

When you think like this, you can start to get mad and feel like experts are holding out on you for not simply giving you the information.

Why, you wonder, don’t they just share the information?

They know The Answer so why are they keeping it to themselves?

Why Experts aren’t sharing “The Answer” with you

Well, the conspiracy theorists will not want to believe this, but experts are “holding out” because:

There is no one simple answer, to anything.

The “right” answer depends on the person, the circumstances, and how to best explain something in the moment.

Most problems come from a lack of doing something about them. This involves having some information yes, but the information is the easy part. People get stuck actually taking effective action. (If that’s not true, then why would anyone ever eat too many potato chips?)

Most problems are actually already solutions. They are a solution to another, more important problem. Eating too many pototo chips is a solution. It’s a solution to how bad you feel when you don’t eat them. So solving the problem of “too many potato chips” also requires finding a new solution to “feeling bad when I don’t eat lots of potato chips”. (Don’t believe me? Try it. Pick a “bad habit” you know you need to quit and just STOP doing it. Notice how long it takes before the bad feelings take over and you go straight to your “bad habit”)

Talking about a need for awareness too much suggests that all we need to solve problems is more information. It ascribes to a kind of “homosapiens roboticus” – the kind of person who will always act logically and predicatably (and unemotionally) when there are good reasons to do something. In other words, the kind of person who doesn’t exist.

There are good reasons not to eat too many potato chips. Hence, nobody will eat too many potato chips. Errr, no.

And yet, that is what the quest for more information presumes: “I am a logical person! I always do the right thing for the right reasons! When I just plug the right info into my system, everything will go right! I do not have a bunch of odd and complex and emotional reasons for my problem, my problem is completely logical and the only thing missing is the right piece of information.”

Sigh.

I am all for awareness and mindfulness. I am all for noticing what happens and slowing down. Yet, it’s also important to be aware of when awareness talk becomes an excuse. A cop out. A way to blame the world for not giving you the “right answer”. A way to stay in the ivory tower of your own mind. A way to avoid the messy work. A way to avoid asking for help. A way to avoid being vulnerable and admitting darn, I really don’t know how to solve this, and thinking about it some more won’t help!

Knowing things and having an awareness isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. There are lots of problems that require more of a hands-on approach, where you learn ways of being with and exploring the problem from the inside out, instead of top down from your brain yelling down to your body about what she’s supposed to do.

]]>How to Figure out What you Want as an HSPhttps://thehappysensitive.com/how-to-figure-out-what-you-want-as-an-hsp/
Thu, 13 Dec 2018 01:41:39 +0000https://thehappysensitive.com/?p=8345

One of the blocks to knowing what you want is often a voice that sounds like: “but other people need me to be X” “there is no time for me to figure out what I want, I have too many responsibilities!”, or even: “my head is filled with what other people want, what I think I should want, and what society tells me I have to want, I’m so confused!”

The HSP strength of being able to consider multiple (people’s) perspectives can make things more confusing. Your own inner voice gets lost in the shuffle.

Plus, when it comes to figuring out what you want amidst the needs of others, it can be hard to find a good in-between. If you struggle to balance the needs of you and the needs of others, and it turns out “you” tend to come last, you’re not alone.

If you’ve been trying to figure this one out, one of the possible pitfalls is that your brain can get stuck on: “either I do what I want and I become completely irresponsible and let everyone down (which is not what I want at all!) or I do what other people want and end up the unhappy doormat! Gah, what do I do??”

Your brain gets stuck in either/or, when in actuality, there are many more possibilities.

The thing is, if “going for what you want” would make you unhappy (because it would be irresponsible and not what you want), then… it’s not actually what you want!

O.k. great, so how do you go from here? Below are two ideas to get you started:

1. Separate Past Wants from Present Wants

Along the way, you may have lost sight of what you actually want right here, right now. Instead, you might be carrying around an old list of ideas of what you used to want.

Maybe those wants never got fulfilled, so they are still on your list. Yet, just because you remember wanting them, doesn’t mean you want them now. It’s important to check. Every year there will be old wants that are outdated and don’t fit your life anymore, but if you haven’t taken the time to discern what would make sense for you right now, they stay on your mental list.

When situations come up that require a stance or decision, give yourself some time to sit with it and discern what your needs and preferences are. How are you really feeling about these things?

You might find that how you feel in your body about it, no longer matches what your mind thinks about it. In that case, your “most wanted list” ;) needs an upgrade.

Your own “most wanted” list may need an upgrade. What inspires you today? (not last year)

2. Worries point to your Wants

Worrying about something may not sound like a want or need, yet there is one hidden in there.

If you worry about x happening, then what you want is to have the opposite of x, or to have a plan to prevent x.

So if you’re worried about all the stress at work, then what you want is to feel calm and self-assured at work. Or maybe what you want is to feel more encouraged and supported and appreciated at work. Or maybe you just want to work less and have more breaks. Or all of the above.

What your worry points to will be personal, but when you take the time to flip it around, it will become clear.

Your worries point to your wants. Flip them around to start an action plan.

Start small

Jumping from feeling Unsure About It All to Passionate Dream Pursuer is too massive of a change and far too much pressure to put on yourself.

Start by looking at small things that you want: what to have for dinner, how long to stay at a party, how to spend your Sundays.

When your smaller wants become clearer (and you act on them), the bigger ones will slowly come into focus too (and when they do, they will feel more doable because you’ve already had some practice putting your wants and needs into action).

Thinking something like this through without any structure – and with all kinds of creative but rambling thoughts – can get you feeling stuck and overwhelmed. So I’ve written out a process for you to break it all down into doable and supportive steps:

1. I am intuitive, I know things about people… therefore I am an empath.

Nope. There are different ways to “know” things. There are different forms of intuition and psychic abilities, being an empath is just one of those options.

Empaths feel energy.

Other psychic gifts can be connected to different senses: knowing things, somehow. Seeing energy around people or having visions or dreams of things that come to pass. You can hear or smell things that are technically not there but that can be a way that your mind is telling you about something happening on the energy plane.

You can also have a mix of different gifts, but the point is that they are all different ways of knowing things.

Myth: I am intuitive, I know things about people… therefore I am an empath.

2. I have feelings I don’t recognize, so therefore I must be psychically picking them up from others!

Nope. You have to be really careful with assumptions like this. It’s possible to be really out of touch with the feelings in your own body, to the point where they feel foreign, even though they are your own.

If you’re convinced that you are an empath but can’t really explain how you know or give a good example (saying: “I just KNOW I was picking up on their feelings…” is not an example :) ) then you need to spend some time investigating. How are you coming to this conclusion?

I’m not saying it’s a false conclusion, just that I’ve spoken to plenty of people who claim to “know” it’s ‘other people’s energy’ when upon closer inspection, that was not the case at all. I’ve also spoken to plenty of people who were picking up on energy from others. Not knowing how you know doesn’t mean you’re wrong, but it does mean you need to investigate further before assuming.

3. Empaths are necessarily kind, because they feel other people’s emotions.

Oh, how I wish this were true! Feeling energy from others is not the same as understanding what you’re feeling or even caring about what that means for others.

In working with empath clients I’ve found huge differences in the ability to truly understand others. Yes, there are empaths who are self-aware, understand emotions in themselves and others and have the psychological insight to put those emotions in context. They can connect “I was feeling this from the other person, so that’s how I know they were going through that, which makes sense because…”

There are also empaths who are severely disconnected from their own bodies. When they are panicking, they don’t experience it as panic. They will say: my chest is tight and my heart is beating very fast. When I ask them what the feeling might be they honestly don’t know. For them, learning that that is panic, is a big aha.

Now imagine if someone who doesn’t recognize panic in their own body, feels tension and pain from others. Yes, they feel it, but they don’t know what it means! Often their experience of other people will be: “other people are in a lot of pain”.

Or, if they are not really interested in the experience of other people, and just experience all those emotions as an overwhelming burden, they could describe other people as being dense, heavy and scary. In other words, for empaths who are not coping well and who are not that emotionally literate, the feelings of other people can be experienced as “get all that ick away from me!”.

This can lead to a somewhat aggressive attitude towards the pain of other people. Kind of like when someone has a contageous disease: “don’t sneeze in my direction!” There’s little concern for how the other is doing and an overwhelming concern with trying to be o.k. yourself and not get infected.

Myth: Empaths are necessarily kind, because they feel other peoples emotions.

4. I am an empath, and I just want to switch my abilities off. How do I do that?

I understand the desire to try to “switch off” but that’s not how this works. To get to the point where it feels like you’re switched off, what you actually need to learn is how to

Identify when/why you’re tuned in to the other person

Learn how to stop doing this

It’s a little bit like saying: I want to switch off my nail-biting! Well, you don’t really switch it off. When you get to a point that you can stop, it’s because you’ve become aware of when, how and why you do it. Plus, you’ve found a way to not just know it, but do something about it as well. You’ve unraveled the habit, as it were. But it’s not like you find a switch in your hand and 30 seconds later, boom, done!

Often the desire to “switch it off” comes from fear, which is the opposite of what you need to get it under control. To get it under control, you need to get curious about it, investigate it, and then apply the right techniques, which I teach here.

5. I feel energy from other people coming at me, this means I absorb it and am an empath, right?

A lot of people throw everything that has to do with being more attuned to other people’s feelings onto the same pile and call it all “empath”. I don’t, because I’ve discovered that there are lots of very different processes by which you may be more sensitive to the emotions of others.

One interesting distinction is between empaths who absorb and hold on to energy, versus clairsentients who feel things (but don’t absorb it). It’s the difference between breathing in air and keeping that air in your lungs, versus breathing in air, and then breathing it all out again. When you breathe it all out, then when you switch environments, you breathe in different air. The old air is gone!

If you keep the air in your lungs however, then you carry the air with you, so even in a new place with different air, the old air will be with you. Keeping this “air” in your “lungs” is not a conscious process, and that’s why being an empath is usually of a whole different order than being clairsentient. Deciding to “let the air go and breathe it out” won’t help, because your conscious mind is not in control of the process.

(This is why even empaths who are very self-aware, are diligent about self-care practices and know “it’s none of my business, so I should let this go!” still won’t be able to, no matter the therapeutic process they try, or how hard they try)

Another important distinction is between people who “receive” energy versus people who “fly around”. Imagine it like this: A few “receivers” and a few “fly arounders” walk into a room. They notice there is a chocolate fountain in the corner. It’s a little over-capacity so the chocolate spills over onto the floor. Something in the fountain settings is a little off, so it’s bubbling up more chocolate than the fountain base can catch and hold.

All that chocolate needs to go somewhere and it ends up gravitating to the natural receiver. The receiver doesn’t go looking for it, they don’t even move towards the fountain, but they are very open, so anything that is present in excess, will gravitate towards them and just flow towards them. The chocolate literally flows across the floor towards them. After a while, their shoes are covered in chocolate!

Now, the people who fly around on the other hand will actually end up flying towards and dipping themselves in the chocolate foundation. But it’s such a habit that they don’t realise they’re doing this. So they may tell friends: “gah, all this chocolate just keeps coming at me! One moment I’m fine, the next moment it’s in my face!”

But do you see how the processes by which “chocolate happened to people” is very different? It may feel like the same experience, but it’s not. And so the solution is also different.

Lastly, there are people who say things like: I’m super empathic because when I sit down next to someone, I will have all these feelings! When I notice that they are a bit tense, I wonder if it’s because my hair looks really funky today. And then when they look away, I wonder if maybe they really don’t like me! Gah, I am so empathic!

Notice, none of that has anything to do with the “energy” of the other person. It’s taking the tiniest of superficial clues and making it “all about you” and whether people like you, if you’re good enough, what you should say to be popular etc.

This has nothing to do with empathy and everything to do with an anxious brain looking for evidence that you’re not welcome somehow. Obviously, having all those anxious thoughts will also create a lot of anxious feelings: fear, panic, anger, frustration, doubt etc. Totally different thing, but I notice a lot of people tend to lump this in with empath experiences.

Are you more confused than ever now? That’s o.k., allow me to help you sort out what is what in a Clarity Call.

Or get started with some core tools and see where that takes you. The Energy Sensivity Starter Kit applies to a lot of different energy situations, whether you are an empath or not (it’s especially helpful if know you have a tendency to “fly around” the room).

]]>Why Narcissists Get Stuck in a Negative Rut – and what you need to know to not get sucked down with themhttps://thehappysensitive.com/why-narcissists-get-stuck-in-a-negative-rut-and-what-you-need-to-know-to-not-get-sucked-down-with-them/
Sat, 20 Oct 2018 21:42:06 +0000https://thehappysensitive.com/?p=8272

Especially when this person is the covert-narcissist victim type, there’s a lot of resentment, blame and superiority going on underneath the surface, but it won’t be apparent at first.

Rather, covert-narcissists love to show off their potential and explain how the world wronged them and misunderstands them.

Yet, no matter what you do to help, it never actually helps. Essentially, they get stuck in a victim role. But, that’s not as sad as it seems!

Here’s why:

1. They NEED to be experts

Being an expert (in a narcissist’s mind) means you know everything. To be that, you need to stay where you are at: you need to continue with the kind of life you are familiar with.

When you are focused on the negative, and you’re convinced that you know everything, then you will dismiss anyone who has a positive solution to anything (“Tss, those uninformed ignorant folk! They’re not seeing things clearly! Doom and gloom IS the way of the world…” )

Personal growth means admitting that maybe things aren’t as you thought. Moving out of negativity means challenging your own thought patterns, working through old emotions and transforming how you deal with the world. You can only do that if you’re willing to be a beginner who needs to start at step 1 again.

A narcissist may be happy to toot the horn of transformation, but only when it’s about them telling other people how those other people are “supposed” to transform. Big difference.

Another “formula” for explaining this: expert = high status, newbie = low status. So, on the extreme end of this, a narcissist who is an expert in an outdated technology, will prefer to find reasons why new technology is dumb. They won’t actually update their knowledge and thereby they will risk becoming irrelevant in their field over time. They may do o.k. for a while, but at some point, people will stop using that thing they are experts at.

So in this way, rather than preparing for the future, they literally dig their own future grave. They value their current expert status over everything else, so much so that they refuse to be newbies – even for a short while – to retain their expert status over time. After all (to them), learning new things involves being told that you’re “wrong” and that is just too humiliating to go through.

Where most people would say: “it’s o.k. to not know something, nobody can know everything” and even “learning new things is interesting!” for a narcissist the world is very black and white. There is no space for “learning something interesting”. Either you’re right, or you’re wrong. If you’re learning something new, then your teacher is right, thereby making you “wrong”. When it cuts to the bone like that, learning sure gets a whole lot less fun!

You can’t teach new things if your “student” believes this makes them wrong. #narcissism

2. They stay “positive” by dismissing their own negativity

Narcissists have a way of burying, denying and disowning their own negativity. This means they will see it in others, but never in themselves. If they are energetically sensitive they can even end up pushing their own negative energy away onto other people. They literally decide that since it’s negative, it cannot possibly have anything to do with them and they just push it away.

This is also why many “spiritual” narcissists will be convinced they are empaths. The idea that other people’s negativity may energetically affect them is the kind of explanation they will wholeheartedly embrace and apply to everything, even to their own massive amounts of suppressed anger, blame, resentment and condescension

“You mean that anything I do not like to feel – and that I therefore label as negative – could actually be someone else’s problem and not mine? Well, yes! Sign me up for that label”.

Ironically, doing this can even make them look very bright and sparkly. That’s because they refuse to deal with anything that isn’t spotlessly clean. Their friends, mate and other people close to them will end up carrying the trashbags though.

Some narcissists will be convinced that they are good at feeling their feelings. If so, look closer. Which feelings exactly? Chances are, they are o.k. at feeling the feelings they like. And because they’re convinced that everything they feel and don’t like has nothing to do with them in the first place, well then they can “honestly” say that they feel all their feelings just fine.

You can’t transform negativity you refuse to deal with. So a narcissist will stay stuck in their negative-sparkly rut.

Sidenote 1: All people, empaths or not, have “negative” feelings of their own they need to deal with. The important question is, are they willing to? You can have suppressed feelings you’re completely unaware of, but do you want to learn how to recognize and own them? For narcissists, the answer to that is no.

Sidenote 2 on negative feelings: no feelings are technically negative, and labeling them as such is mostly unhelpful. But, for the sake of this article, “negative feelings” makes things a lot more clear, so I’m not diving into the details of labeling feelings here.

You can’t help someone transform negativity they refuse to deal with. #narcissism

3. They want to win at all costs

Narcissists have chosen to prioritise “winning” over everything else. This is not to say that people who want to win are bad people! It’s just that healthy winning happens in a healthy context, it’s not about winning at all costs and it’s not about winning at everything!

Focusing so much on winning has a price. If you always want to beat others at everything, you end up feeling lonely. Other people will (eventually) stop supporting you when you make them feel “less than” all the time. Winning may give you a boost, but it’s not the same as happiness.

You can’t “win” at life by making winning THE top priority. There is so much you miss out on!

You can’t help someone heal, if they just want to win and be better than you. #narcissism

4. They need to be on their home-turf to control others

Narcissists have a strong need to control other people. To do this, they need to be on familiar turf. If they’re in a new transformational space, where they don’t know up from down, then obviously they won’t have any leverage over others!

They have perfected their mechanisms for overpowering others right where they’re at, so why throw all that away? Why change a winning game?

You can’t help someone heal who uses their misery to control everyone. #narcissism

5. It’s hard to invest in something when you’ve spent your whole life devalueing it

Since narcissists need to win – at everything – and they obviously can’t be experts at everything, they have a nifty work-around. If they’re not an expert at it, then it’s because that topic / expertise / way of doing things is not worth being an expert at.

By denoting their own fields of expertise* as clearly superior to everything else you could learn or know, they never have to step out of their comfort zone.

*A narcissists’ expertise can be something that is technically no expertise at all, just a way they think something needs to be done. Why that way? Because they’re the expert at it!

But if you spend your whole life saying that the world outside your little microcosm is not worth dealing with because it’s just not valuable, then it takes a lot to say: “oh, maybe I should explore that anyway”.

So for a narcissist to start healing, requires that they start valuing something they’ve actively devalued and ridiculed their whole life. Because real healing requires vulnerability and facing inner mess and confusion. It requires learning new things, about the world but mostly about yourself.

Real healing is not what narcissists are after: a shiny squeek­y-clea­n vision of THEIR humanity.

6. They lock themselves into their own Ivory Mind Tower

The mind is a very predictable place. You can tell yourself “I am an elephant!” every day, and at some point, the thought becomes automatic. In fact, you can tell yourself anything you want and at some point you’ll start to “naturally” believe it. Some narcissists are a big fan of “positive thinking” for this reason. They tell themselves great things about themselves in their mind, and just ignore all evidence to the contrary. It can make them very convincing at first because they’ll come off as self-assured and unwavering.

So, the Ivory Mind Tower is their favorite place to hang out. Not so with the body. The body is the place of whimsical emotions, unexplored depths and mysterious sensations – all very chaotic and uncontrollable. No wonder then that narcissists prefer to be up in their heads and ignore their bodies.

(By the way, when I say this, I don’t mean to say that narcissistic people don’t work out. They may work out a lot. But there is a difference between pushing your body to perform, versus being in touch with your feelings and natural desires, and having respect for your physical limits).

Struggling with being in their body is not unique to narcissists, but their resistance to it is. They will adamantly refuse to feel into their body in any meaningful way. They want to solve all their problems exclusively through “thinking about it”. And so they might be quite interested in learning about how things work, as long as they don’t need to feel into their body, ever.

Their success mantra seems to be: “If I don’t feel it, it doesn’t exist”. And so, they have no interest in exploring the idea that maybe not feeling anything is a sign of being disconnected and shut down.

As a result of that, it’s almost like they become split into two different beings. Up in their head, they think they’re running the show. They’ve dedicated themselves to upholding a certain self-image and squashing the competition (which is everyone worthy of their attention). Meanwhile, down in their bodies, all kinds of pain, complications, stressors and feelings are festering. Because the mind refuses to acknowledge any of it, a lot of this bodily pain turns into a kind of slime that starts oozing out, creating a very definitive, yet hard to pinpoint ick factor.

Because their inner world has composted into slime, it’s harder to recover. If you deal with a difficult event a month after it happened, most of the details will be fresh in your memory. It’s easier to pick through the rubble and identify what was what, and why it’s there: “oh, that’s right, and then she said that I was a good for nothing slob and I remember choking back my tears, because I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. So that must be what this mix of grief and anger is all about that’s been weighing on me since.”

If you have a few old events that were never fully processed, but you generally stay on top of how you feel about things, then recovery is a doable chore. It will consist of a few mysterious boxes that need unpacking, but not a whole warehouse of them. Even if your childhood is a big black hole, healing is very possible as long as you value the wisdom of your body and are willing to uncover it.

In the body of the narcissist though, not only are there several warehouses full of boxes, those warehouses are also sorely neglected. They’re damp. The boxes are moldy. Cats broke in and peed on everything… who would want to open those doors and figure out what is what?

Exactly.

So over time, the reasons for avoiding the Body Warehouse and staying up in the Ivory Mind Tower just become more and more compelling. For a narcissist to heal, they’d basically need to be convinced that: going down to those warehouses, picking through all those boxes, and feeling bad and overwhelmed in the process would be an excellent idea.

In other words, their own way of life-processing creates such inner waste, that straightening it all out would be a nightmare. A nightmare that would: strip away their superiority and everything they worked so hard to create.

It’s like walking up to someone who spent years building their own kingdom and saying: “excuse me sir, would you be interested in blowing it all up? It would make you a nicer person!”

Good luck with that.

To a narcissist, healing would entail blowing up their kingdom of superi­ority. Notgonnahappen

Summing Up

So the hard thing to really “get” about a chronic victim like this, is that their suffering is their spider’s web. It is their source of: feeling good about themselves and getting what (they believe) they need from others.

It works just fine for them. And since, any real suffering they experience as a result is something they will manage to push away and disown, they’ve created a mechanism by which they don’t suffer the consequences of their own stance.

Of course, on some level, it’s still eating away at them. But if they don’t feel that, then it won’t get them to do anything about it. The only wake-up call they might respond to is when they have nobody left to help them and they have to manage completely on their own.

Problem is, there’s always someone who needs initiating into the world of Help That Doesn’t Help. So, these victims are basically set for life. They’ll be fine without you, I promise.

For chronic victims, their suffering is their spider’s web of survival. You are the fly.

Is there a way out?

If you keep getting sucked into painful situations with narcissists, it means you have learned blind-spots.

There is no shame in that, you can unlearn them!

In fact, many naturally caring people learn to “misinterprete” malicious behaviour – because it just makes no sense to us why someone would hurt others, or stay stuck in misery, on purpose!

And yet, some people do, and trying to understand them or help them will – over time – completely suck you dry.

You know – at least in theory – how important it is to put on your own oxygen mask first. The next step is being savvy about who you invest your energy and support into. If it all goes down one big gaping bottomless well, then imagine how many other well-willing people you could support with that same amount of nurturing!

We have to be smart about how we make this world a better place. You don’t have endless energy to give. When you give to the wrong people, they can drain you to the point where you become a victim yourself. That doesn’t help anyone.

I have created a programme that teaches you how to spot and heal the ways in which you keep stepping into those bottomless messes narcissists create. Yes, they are the problem, yet from our end, we need to really internalise that and stop trying to help them. Many of us have helper blind-spots that keep attracting these types into our life and no amount of “knowing better” seems to stop it.

]]>When Trying to Make Things Work is Making You Feel Hopelesshttps://thehappysensitive.com/when-trying-to-make-things-work-is-making-you-feel-hopeless/
Thu, 11 Oct 2018 18:59:51 +0000https://thehappysensitive.com/?p=8162

For the creative world-makers it’s hard to hear that this is the way it is and always will be!

In fact, chances are, you reject a rigid statement like that. Nothing, absolutely nothing needs to stay the way it is, and it shouldn’t!

I applaud your creativity. I understand it. I have it. And I’ve had to learn to be mindful about what I apply it to, because…

In fact, the creative side of you that sees how things could and should be different is missing out on something huge.

She is missing out on knowing herself. (Or himself, for the guys reading this)

Let me explain.

As a creative person, you can kind of throw yourself into things. You go out there, you get started, you figure out what is what along the way. This is all good. No point endlessly pondering things in advance!

Yet, here’s the problem: when you always dive into things with the attitude of “I will figure out how to make this work along the way” then you can end up engaging with impossible projects (or: impossible relationships) and try to make those work at all costs.

You just keep tweaking things, and since you’re so busy being busy with it all, you forget to check and look back to ask yourself: is this realistically possible?

Is it realistically possible?

For the very stubborn creatives out there, let me spell out what realistic means:

Realistic means that:

1. Your project welcomes the change you deem necessary.

2. The energy it takes to make change happen is a small percentage of your total daily energy. (In other words, if change takes 3 years, no problem! It’s not going to exhaust you).

O.k. so what does this have to do with knowing yourself, and how could you be missing out on that?

When you creatively engage with the world, looking for ways to make things better, you run the risk of not seeing the big picture. You come up against something that doesn’t feel right, so you throw all your energy at changing it. Meanwhile, you’re not seeing how this one thing that isn’t right, is part of a bigger structure that isn’t right.

And when I say “isn’t right” I mean: isn’t right for you.

You can end up getting into something that isn’t right for you but because your focus is always on figuring out how to smoothe out the next wrinkle. By working so hard, you lose sight of the bigger picture.

Let’s look at this as making a dress.

You go out to get some fabric. You want a dress and something about the fabric appealed to you. You haven’t decided yet on the particular style of dress you want, but you figure you can decide on that later.

The fabric you chose is silky and a bit stiff. You look at dress patterns you like and pick one for a flowy dress. When you’re making the dress using the stiff fabric, you realise something doesn’t look right.

After pondering it for a while, you realise the fabric has stiff folds that don’t do the pattern justice. So you go and google for ways to make stiff fabric softer. And, now that you think about it, you also realise the colour doesn’t suit you, so you get some fabric dye to make the fabric another colour.

As it turns out, the silky texture doesn’t really allow for dyeing… That is, regular fabric dye doesn’t work, but there’s a special kind you can get on Amazon that might work…

Can you see how this is turning into a lot of work, especially when you don’t want to give up?

It’s o.k. to stop fixing

Granted, there are plenty of people – HSPs included – who give up really quickly and for them, learning how to hang in there a bit longer would work magic! But for those of us who are already plenty determined to make it work there is an art to keeping track of the number of disappointments and unexpected adjustments.

Don’t tell yourself that this will be the “final” bit of work and then everything will be great. Thinking that way turns into a slippery slope of Never Ending Work (Yes, trying something N.E.W. can mean Never Ending Work if you’re not careful!). You could end up trying to turn that dress into a winter coat. Yes, the possibilities are endless, and also exhausting.

Experimenting like this is wonderful and can be a lot of fun, but ultimately it’s meant to be a way to get to know yourself better and figure out what you really want. As you’re working on the dress, you discover what kind of dress you really want. Rather than trying to change everything about the current dress to make it right, how about starting over? Now that you know what you want, starting over will be much easier. You’ll be able to get the right fabric from the get go, and you already have the design you want. Easy peasy!

Be careful when trying something N.E.W. to solve a problem becomes Never Ending Work

Next time you’re flexing your alchemy muscles to turn an apple into a pear, it’s worth pausing midway and realising: “aha, I thought I wanted an apple, but what I really want is a pear!”

There’s no shame in that. There’s no shame in needing to try things on for size to understand what size you really need.

It only becomes a problem when you keep trying to turn one thing into something else. And this is where knowing yourself comes in.

When you keep trying to change things into something else, you never pause to reflect on who you are and what you need. Instead, you keep trying to make things work by throwing all your energy into it. And that’s exhausting.

Throwing all your energy into making things change is exhausting. Ask: what do I really need?

You can work so hard that you start to feel hopeless

Chances are, at some point you start to feel hopeless. Thing is, it’s not because there is no hope for you. It’s just that, when you try to turn a bridge into an elephant, at some point, you’ll get exhausted and stuck! You need to step back and ask yourself:

What am I trying to create?

How is what I am trying to create diffferent from what is here right now?

What is the thing I am trying to create called? Where can I find it ready-made? What qualities does it have that I should be looking for?

I created a fillable PDF worksheet to make thinking this through easier:

(Be sure to click the download button, then save the fillable PDF to your computer. You can now type in it and save your notes and reuse the worksheet as many times as you like – feel free to share it with friends too)

When you actually do step 3, then you are taking the time to turn your creative work into self-knowledge. This is very useful! It means you can stop doing what is exhausting you and directly look for what you actually want, from the get go!

How amazing is that!

Instead of trying to turn a sidetable into a bed, you can go and look for the bed that has the qualities you want! Instead of knitting all your tea towels into one big blanket, you can just go and get a big blanket! Instead of inviting lots of rude people to a party and trying to teach them how to behave, you can instead invite a bunch of well-behaved people!

This is a major time-hack. When you practice this, you will have so much time left that you could start a whole new side-business. Or maybe first, you can just catch up on some much needed sleep.

P.S. I know that even though this is simple, it can be far from easy – depending on the project you apply it to. In making changes that make sense, and that we understand are helpful we’re also up against a lot of difficult feelings and old habits that can be hard to break. The first step though is getting a sense of new possibilities. From there, if you need help, you can always reach out by setting up a Clarity Call. Because… the whole point of this is to start breaking the habit of just trying to work harder and somehow make it work on your own, right? We all get overwhelmed and hopeless when we try to just keep on keeping on by ourselves.

When something happens a lot, with a lot of people I talk to in a row, I know it’s something I need to write about.

Recently, I’ve had a lot of conversations with HSPs who doubt their intuition. Nothing wrong with doubting! After all, there is such a thing as being too sure (and full of) yourself. For instance, people who believe they have the answer to everything would benefit from a spoonfull of doubt every once in a while (We can all think of someone, am I right?). Doubting opens up new possibilities in a boxed-in brain.

Yet, the doubting I want to address here is of a different kind. It’s the long-term doubting that is a reaction against an uncomfortable thing you know deep in your bones. This thing you know deep in your bones might be incredibly weird. It may be something others would judge you for. Acting upon it might alienate you from some people. Taking this knowing seriously would have serious consequences.

What is a person with strong intuition to do, when following through on their intuition would be hard and uncomfortable but they don’t want to accept that?

They doubt.

They doubt what they know.

When you doubt, you get to keep both options.You get to keep your intuitive knowing, and you get to hold on to the societal standard that is comfortable as well. It’s two for one! (Who doesn’t love a good sale?).

Here’s the underlying dilemma: Trusting your intuition means you go against what your social circle believes. So it would alienate you from them (even if just for a moment!) and bring up fears of rejection, ridicule, and being all alone. Those are all very big dramatic feelings for our social animal self. Out in the wild (and who says modern life isn’t wild?) being rejected by your tribe means certain death. There are not many successfull lone cowboys out there. Better to stick with the status quo!

But your intuition can’t be fully denied. It requires validation! So the solution the ever ingenious mind comes up with is to doubt. You spend 50% of your time supporting your intuition: cheering it on, congratulating it, patting it on the back. Then you spend the other 50% of your time agreeing with society, sticking to the norm, and doubting your intuition: you come up with all the reasons why surely, you couldn’t possibly trust yourself, because.. come on!

But, this is just the beginning! Now that you have two opposite pathways running, both of which meet a need (the need to belong a.k.a. reject your intuition, and the need to trust yourself a.k.a. trust your intuition) you also need to make sure that you keep doubting.

You can’t let either side win you see. After all, if your intuition wins, that leads to all kinds of tough consequences you can’t oversee (or so you fear). Maybe someone will get really mad at you. Maybe someone won’t take you seriously. Maybe your family will judge and attack you. Maybe you’ll have to do it all on your own.

If – on the other hand – you let the doubts win, well then it means that your intuitive self will feel bad and rejected. Deep inside, you’ll get a little smaller, less bright, and less enthusiastic about life (or maybe a whole lot less enthusiastic).

Can’t let that happen either! So you teeter totter. You go back and forth. You don’t decide. You keep trying to figure it out (which is code for finding an ideal solution that doesn’t exist).

And the beauty is, while you are busy trying so hard, you get to stay friends with both camps. The people who are on the side of social convention will listen to you and support your doubts about yourself. Of course, your intuition is crazy, but no worries, you still belong to the Normal Club, because you’re smart enough to doubt your intuition! And the people who side with your intuition will support you too, because they see that you do give your intuition some serious thought and hey, following your intuition is not easy, they totally get that!

So you keep both camps happy. Plus, the whole business of doubting 24/7 keeps you plenty occupied. Occupied enough to distract you from the sense that this is going nowhere fast.

So to recap: you keep everyone happy, you support both your inner Conventionalist and your Intuitive Revolutionary (you split your ballot into two and gave them both half) and to top it all off, you also knock out your bodily symptoms of discomfort by getting fully caught up in the mental activity of doubting so you barely notice how stressed the doubting itself is making you.

LaLaLand 2: Reality 0 !

And after being here for a while, you start to find that this is the place to be. Doubting meets all your needs, or so it seems. You stay friends with everybody. You don’t have to do something uncomfortable. And, most importantly, you keep all your options open! Which is like ultimate freedom, right?

Except, how freeing is it to stay in the Teeter Totter Country Club? Sure, you get to mull over your dilemma with some interesting people, play a round of golf and have a fancy drink… it’s comfortable! Yet, does it really get you to where you really want to be? Is your purpose just to be at the clubhouse all day? If it is, stay put! But if it’s not, you’ll need to take a decision.

Even if you reach this stage though, you still have a “reasonable” out: you can spend a whole lot of time trying to figure out how to stop doubting yourself (which is another fancy way to extend the “I want to have it all, because, why not?” mentality). Welcome to the hall of mirrors! There is no Magic How. What you’re really looking for is a way to make moving forward comfortable, instead of accepting that it won’t be. The whole gist of it is: you need to pick a side and stick with it.

You need to accept that you can’t have it all. You can’t keep everyone happy. You can’t keep all your options open.

If you want to move forward living your own life, doing things that are meaningful, then you need to see long-term doubting for what it really is: a nifty way for your mind to keep you in your torturous comfort zone and very very stuck there. It’s a hamsterwheel. Running around in your head may feel really productive, but you’re still in a cage, eating the same dried bits every day.

Chronic doubting is an attempt to water down your intuition and your purpose to “be normal”.

You are here to be your own true self. Not be Mrs Copy of Some Other Lady Who is Well Liked and Dresses Appropriately. That doesn’t mean you have to be a radical dresser (only if it’s calling to you). It just means your intuition is trying to lead you somewhere good. Away from the particular conventions that don’t help you breathe and laugh.

If you’d like to make a new start on a more intuitive path, that suits you and honours you, the HSP Comfort Kit will help you create space to hear and trust your intuiton, one tiny step at a time. You can get it here.